and vocalizing downward, instead of vice versa. The main reason for the necessity of this downward vocalization is what is known as the movable break. In an adult voice, the change from a low register to a higher one always takes place at approximately the same place in the scale; but the child's voice is immature, his vocal organs have not formed definitely established habits, and the chest register is often pushed upward to c´´, d´´, or even e´´
. This is practically always done in singing an ascending scale loudly, and the result is not only distressing to the listener, but ruinous to the voice. In former days this type of singing was common in our public schools, the result being that most boys honestly thought it impossible to sing higher than c´´ or d´´
this being the limit beyond which it was difficult to push the chest voice. The head voice was thus not used at all, and the singing of public school children in the past has in most cases been anything but satisfactory from the standpoint of tonal beauty. But most supervisors of music have now become somewhat familiar with the child voice, and are insisting upon high-pitched songs, soft singing, and downward vocalization, these being the three indispensable factors in the proper training of children's voices. The result is that in many places school children are at the present time singing very well indeed, and the present growing tendency to encourage public performance by large groups of them makes available a new color to the composer of choral and orchestral music, and promises many a thrill to the concert-goer of the future.
It is the head register, or thin voice, that produces the pure, flutelike tones which are the essential charm of a boy choir, and if chest tones are to be employed at all, they must be made as nearly as possible as are the head tones, thus causing the voice to produce an approximately uniform timbre in the entire scale. This may be accomplished with a fair degree of ease by a strict adherence to the three principles of procedure mentioned in the above paragraph. In fact these three things are almost the beginning, middle, and end of child-voice training, and since they thus form the sine qua non of effective boy-choir singing, we shall emphasize them through reiteration.
1. The singing must be soft until the child has learned to produce tone correctly as a habit.
2. Downward vocalization should be employed in the early stages, so as to insure the use of the head voice.
3. The music should be high in range, in order that the child may be given as favorable an opportunity as possible of producing his best tones.